Thoughts on the Filibuster Flap

I've missed most of this story, or at least all the recent developments in it, due to some major personal stress in my life--a painful breakup of the sort that transforms anything relating to politics into some far away, abstract realm having nothing to do with the immediate reality of personal disaster. But things are calming down now, so let's see if I can get back into this thing:

Recent news is that a compromise has been reached. Kos has the best summary I've seen. Essentially, we're getting stuck with three really slimy judicial nominees, but the ability to filibuster future nominees has ostensibly been preserved. This means that James Dobson, nutjob extraordinaire, doesn't get to choose the next Supreme Court nominee. Moreover, the Democrats managed to accomplish this with a 10-seat deficit in the Senate. On the other hand, the Rude Pundit points out that the whole point of this exercise was to enable a power grab by the Bush administration, and that they'll try it again as soon as they can by nominating "the most batshit insane asshole next to try to break this deal."

So it's debatable what's been accomplished. Personally, I'm having a difficult time being happy with this outcome. Yes, the Democrats actually managed to show a bit of spine on this one, but I really have to wonder why on this Earth they took so damn long. If the Democratic party hadn't caved in to virtually every absurd Republican demand over the past four years (or 13, depending on how cynical you are) in the name of "bipartisanship," a compromise like this never would have been necessary. Without almost constant Democratic cave-ins, the GOP never would have been able to amass the political power necessary to make such a ridiculous demand in the first place. The Republicans are grand masters at the game of "give them an inch and they'll take a mile," and the Democrats, for years and years, have been mostly oblivious to this fact.

I recall very clearly how Bill Clinton promised to alleviate "gridlock" by working with the Republicans. What was very clear by the end of his first term was that this promise was the greatest gift he could have given to the opposition, because it put the GOP in the position of being able to squawk, "What about bipartisanship?" every time the Democrats dared to dig in their heels about something. The Democrats never even realized how completely they had outmaneuvered themselves. Even in this recent filibuster debate, you could hear Democrats making dire predictions that elimination of judicial filibusters would mean the "end of bipartisanship" in the Senate, as if this mythical "bipartisanship" had ever existed in the first place. Show me one example in the past 20 years of the Republican party complaining about "gridlock" or exhibiting "bipartisanship" in either house of Congress, when it wasn't obviously in their interests to do so. "Bipartisanship" is a fiction, created by the Republicans to trick the Democrats into giving them what they want. The process is very simple: 1) Republicans have something they want. 2) However, what they actually put forward is a proposal quite a bit more audacious and radical--something the Democrats are not going to want to accept. 3) In the name of "bipartisanship," the Democrats offer a compromise. Most likely, the offer is put forth by a coalition of "moderate" Democrats and Republicans. 4) The Republicans reluctantly agree, thereby getting what they wanted in the first place. 5) When the next election comes up, the Democrats stand there wondering why people consider them to be such a bunch of spineless wimps.

Of course this is an oversimplification, but I think it's a pretty good bare-bones summary of the Democrats' losing political strategy. The question is, when are they going to wake the fuck up? Now, maybe? Perhaps the best thing to come out of this filibuster flap is that most of the Senate Democrats were actually willing to go so far as to bring the business of the Senate to a screeching halt, damn the political consequences, if judicial filibusters had been eliminated. My feeling is that they'll have another opportunity to display this level of fortitude before too long. Let's hope they actually avail themselves of it.

Stupid-assed control-freak media companies

I was originally going to post this on [my other blog, which is no longer active], but then I realized it's related to an important political issue that is truly dear to my heart: intellectual property.

A while back, Glenn H on Peoplesforum.com posted a link to a trailer for the upcoming movie Serenity. Tonight, I finally remembered to actually watch it, and midway through, I decided it rated highly enough on the coolness scale to actually be worth saving. Since the trailer is a Quicktime movie embedded into a webpage, there is no way to save it via contextual menu (not in this browser, at least), so I pulled up a source code window for that page to find the actual URL of the trailer. I found it, pasted it into the address bar of my browser, and then chose "Save Page As" from the file menu.

I've used this method before with embedded media and it usually works pretty well. In this case, however, what I ended up with was a Quicktime movie icon on my desktop that, when double clicked, resulted in an error message. I forget precisely what the message was, but it was obvious what the real problem was: This trailer was copy protected. Or, maybe, the trailer itself was hidden somehow and the URL I found was only the first step in actually accessing it. Who knows.

I can understand the need for this sort of thing, what with big copyright owners shitting their pants on a regular basis over all the "piracy" that goes on over the internet. Copyrighted material is, according to the law, their property, so they are within their legal rights to protect it. But in this case I really have to wonder which lawyer had his head stuck so firmly up his ass. This clip I was trying to save is a trailer. An advertisement.

Suppose I had succeeded in saving a copy for myself? What would I do with it? There are three possibilities:

1) I might never watch it again, and at some point delete it from my hard drive. In this case, who cares whether I downloaded it in the first place?
2) I might keep it indefinitely, and watch it. This would very likely have the effect of reminding me of the movie, making it that much more likely that I'll see it in the theater. Possibly several times, if I get really fired up over it. Moreover, if I have it on my hard drive, it is far more accessible to me than if it's located at some very obscure URL on the Apple Computer website. I'm far more likely to see it again if I have my own saved copy than if I don't.
3) I might show it to other people, or upload it to some other internet location, in which case other people will end up obtaining it and watching it themselves. This will likely have the effect of increasing their interest in seeing the movie, too.

So the worst case scenario is that saving my own copy of the trailer has no effect on anything at all, and the more likely probability is that it will actually increase the trailer's effectiveness as an advertisement. By refusing to allow me to save a copy, the people who own this advertisement are undermining sales of their own product (namely, the movie Serenity).

However, far be it from me to presume to understand the lofty thought processes of corporate intellectual property hawks.

Spinoff Blog

Recently I've decided to focus this blog more exclusively on politics and world affairs type stuff, indicated by a change to the description up at the top that I implemented last week (or maybe it was the week before).

Consequently, a need arose to create another blog where I could post items that no longer fit the focus of this blog. So I did, a few days ago. I haven't remembered to post a link to it on the sidebar yet, but the blog itself is called [redacted--it's no longer active and I would rather not direct people to it, sorry]. I had actually wanted to grab the address http://chunkyblog.blogspot.com, but it was taken already. (And by a single-post blog, too! Damn!)

There's also a third blog that I started a little over a month ago (which means it would actually be the second blog, I guess), but I am currently undecided as to the specific direction I am going with that one, so I will not post a link to it at this point.

Lopez Obrador cleared

Good news!

Mexico City Mayor Cleared of Wrongdoing

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's government has cleared the capital's mayor of wrongdoing, conceding defeat in a nasty political fight that ousted an attorney general and raised criticisms that President Vicente Fox was unfairly targeting his top rival.

Federal prosecutors dropped all charges against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday. Constitutional term limits bar Fox from running again, and Lopez Obrador, a well-quaffed and outspoken populist known for the government handout programs he champions, is the leading candidate to replace him, according to most public opinion polls. [snip]

Now he can get busy with the business of running for president. I only hope the U.S. doesn't interfere.